Defiance Lies
by Uchiha Kengura
Summary: Jar'ei, a young girl has a fleeting encounter with someone who changes her path.


Gripping along the slender hilt of the sabre, Jar'ei sighed and clenched her teeth slowly together, forming a small seal to hold back the breath that had just given her away. Thinking through her last attack, stuck between a closed blast door and a room full of pissed off droids, she'd rather be anywhere than this particular spot in the universe, especially if it meant doing what she had come to do in the first place.

The saber in her hands was lifeless, dinged and cracked. She was surprised that the vibro function was even still working as the power cell was nearly depleted and it was beginning to overheat from all the use and abuse she'd been putting her poor little sword through. Dodging blaster fire from a droid wasn't normally an issue for her, but these new models, they were something else entirely. Her blade, singing through the air would slice and dice even the newest of the B-1 model droids, and cut through astromech's like they were made of old papers.

But these new droids? Where did they come from? How long had they been manufactured? So many questions bounced around in her head while she sat there, waiting for the latest patrol to pass and let her go free upon her quest, well… not really hers. Well it is hers but… more of an inherited quest than anything else at the moment. Jar'ei didn't even know his name, where he was from, or anything about him really. Why was she trying to rescue him then? She had nothing to benefit from it at the time, and ever since he showed up on the planet there's been nothing but chaos ever since.

The heavy, methodical clank of the B-3 Super Battle Droid had become common to her since she laid in waiting, hiding behind some crates of medical supplies and restricting her own breathing.

 _"Calm… must calm down…. Breath deep… breath slow…_ " She repeated. Over and over, mentally meditating in the heat of battle to try and slow her own body functions and avoid detection after her most recent escape. It was quite clever actually, dodging a few blaster bolts so they hit the droids adjacent to her, flipping the lid of a container that had a duranium plating which reflected bolts back at the droids, they must have not even known what was happening until it was too late.

Sighing a quick, fleeting smile from her already bruised lips, her ego started to fade after a few moments, realizing the more steps were coming. Lots more. In fact, she couldn't even count how many, the hallway echoed with the sounds of grinding gears and moving parts, passing the corridor doorway to her makeshift hideaway.

Curious, she slunk all the way to the ground, pressing her chest and stomach to the floor and sliding along it ever so slightly, trying to get a peek under one of the crates to see the combatants and try and count some sort of numbers. Looking under the crates was useless, seeing nothing more than constant shuffles of feet she couldn't make out much else from the punishing angle she'd chosen for herself.

"I'm going to need to get closer to them…." She said to herself, quietly and under her breath. The whisper only traveled so far before disappearing, but it was long enough so that an audio sensor in the room instantly came alive, and the cameras activated, panning violently and scanning for her presence. Quickly dodging its view and ducking below the crates, she barely got out of sight in time to miss this scan of the droids.

Her blood boiling at herself for letting that happen, she pressed her hand against the hilt of her vibro saber, clutching it firmly and nodding.

"Just 13 seconds, that's all we need girl." She said, mentally this time to herself. 13 seconds at a full-on run, dashing through the next corridor, grabbing the control handle to manually lock the door and seal herself off from this whole compartment. She'd also be one step closer to rescuing him from the prison cell that the Droid's had stuffed him in when they first captured him.

Well, to be fair, he didn't put up much of a fight either. She remembered his landing on the platform, and within minutes being swarmed by dozens of Vulture droids, doing atmospheric maneuvers and attempting to shoot down this tiny, diamond shaped vessel that literally fell from the sky not seconds before she'd caught first sight of it.

The pilot was well within his talents to level the craft off and get the small ship landed, but It wasn't enough to save it from the impact damage coming from such a hot landing. Hot landings, produce a lot of smoke because normally, things catch on fire and he couldn't have started a better signal fire than one of the largest natural fires seen on Tarila in many years. The flames shot high up trees, filled with flammable materials and made with a special resin that was extremely corrosive and flammable, almost more so than any other material ever found. As the trees burst into flames, the signal beacon was growing ever more desperate and quickly drew the attention of every, single enemy starfighter to his crashed position.

The Pilot did escape, but not for long, as droids descended by the dozens, landing all around him, just as Jar'ei had begun to reach out for him. Trapped in a flurried motion of gears and blaster fire, the Pilot was taken away and out of her sight as she let him go without any harm at all. It almost seemed like they intended to capture him from the start.

Droid's don't normally take prisoners, and she had thought this strange, even though breaking into the droid cruiser that had been in orbit around the planet, something had felt strange about all of this. Palms sweaty, dirty and the wrappings on her hands ripped from fighting her way through the corridors of the space bound craft, she continued to hold her position, waiting for her moment.

" _Just 13 seconds…"_ she repeated again mentally, gripping the handle of her sleek sword firmly with both hands. She looked at its razor edge, humming in her hands as she turned the power cell down slightly, and with a close of her eyes breathed one more time, slow and precise.

In….

Out…

The method was almost second nature to her now. The feeling of the release right before movement, of clearing her mind, quietly letting herself slip into another space mentally and her body act on pure instinct alone. That feeling, was the most alive she ever felt, the calm resurgence of power echoing through her yet, freed from any and all worry. In those moments, she felt alive, she truly felt alive.

Stepping up, her mind a blank slate as she approached the open doorway to the corridor, she peeked her head out and saw her target. A small black door, marked with a solitary red "X" on the front of it. That was where he had been taken, and presumably was being held prisoner.

 _"3…"_ internally she counted, pressing her finger against the vibro-blade's activation button and hearing it hum ever so slightly again.

 _"2…"_ counting down, she flicked her head back and forth, ensuring there was only the 2 droids at the door, guarding it like metallic sentry statues. Never moving, never blinking just standing there guarding the door. No one else nearby, no other guards or moving droids after the last batch had moved along to another corridor.

 _"1…"_ pressing her hands down the cloth wrapped handle of the saber, she brought it to an outstretched position. The muscle fibers in her arms and legs tensed, and she pressed down into the soles of her feet with all the power she had, feeling something flow through her. A sort of power, strong and vibrant pushed her forward, almost like a springboard or a tightly stretched rope launching her forward, propelling her like a missile.

Jar'ei launched, each step bringing her meters closer to the door, covering the distance in amazing, super human time. The steps she took were precise, accurate and bold. Each footfall, like dancing across a still pond, only making enough of a step to continue propelling her forward and launching off again at amazing speeds. Her gait was wide and the draw on her blade narrow to her body, holding it close and ready to strike.

13 seconds. That's how long it took to cover the distance from where she was to the prisoner holding door. Over 50 meters away and she covered it while almost gliding over the floor like a ghost, the droids, reacting to the motion had only started to turn after 8 seconds, raise their blasters after 11 and pull the trigger at 12.

"Too slow!" Screaming loudly, the blasters started to fire as she careened towards the droids, catching them both by surprise. The blade of her sword glided straight through the CPU of the first droid, deactivating it and dropping it's motorized corpse to the floor instantly, and the 2nd droid was left standing, its chassis expelling a large vibroblade, plunged directly into its power supply as the droid shook and violently shocked and zapped from the discharge, falling limp after the energy held within its power cell violently erupted across the chassis of the droid.

Jar'ei stood, a small, defiant smirk on her face as she pressed her hand on the door. The smile, confident that she'd taken them down with such ease and mastery, it was almost as if she'd been training for battle all her life against the militarized force. With her blade held low, she started to open the door and through it, she began to step into the room, a small holding cell makeshift in design.

A small man, lay on the floor and he looked up, his eyes in fear of something, dropping his gaze with her as she fell to the floor. Smoke rose after the ringing sound of blaster fire from behind and a bright flash of red illuminated her silhouette.

Watching her body as she fell to her knees, not even knowing her name he despaired. He'd only seen her once, back on the planet and now… she was falling, and all hope seemed to fade with her to the ground as she collapsed.


End file.
